Economy and Tummy Tucks Don’t go Hand in Hand.
How bad does the economy suck right now? I want to get my surgery so so so bad, and I have just about $5,500 dollar saved up (enough for a tummy tuck!), but I can’t take time off of work. Not with the way layoffs have been around here. But I’m so tired of carrying around this heavy gut.
Sometimes you just want to give up. Gawd I know I do. The only way I can maintain my 175 pound weight loss (it’s still SO weird to look back and know I was 175 pounds heavier!) I have to keep counting calories and keeping a close watch on my daily diet. The week days are flawless. I can handle the week days. It’s the weekend’s where I want to enjoy food. Is that so bad? To be human and want to enjoy food? But when I am set free to eat whatever I want, I take it so far as to where I need to work out 5 days a week just to get the bloat off.
This weekend it was criss cut fries with ranch dressing from Carles Jr. Oh how I’ve missed thee. I also enjoyed 3 home made brownies, a nice amount of applesauce raisin cookies, and ice cream, cereal, you name it… I ate it. With all the stress I’ve had I can’t help it. I just want to EAT (and drink) until I’m about to pop. Then I want to lay down and cry until tomorrow.
I just don’t wanna care right now. And it makes me think about this damn tummy tuck so much. Every pound I gain goes RIGHT there. Staring at me. Making my belly button look like a fat frown. Making my gut feel heavy to carry around. Then I get down and out of it. But I know the bloat will go, and by this coming Friday I’ll be ready to do it again.
The cycle just continues from here huh?
So now cheers to a fresh Monday morning, oatmeal for breakfast, apple and chicken breast sandwich for lunch, gym at 2 for a great cardio workout, have me a snack, and tacos for dinner.
4 comments June 15, 2009
Plastic Surgery and Financial Priorities
It would be great to take advantage of low interest rates for plastic surgery personal loan, but more of one to buy a house. Decisions decisions.
Continue Reading Add comment May 13, 2009
Maintaining 175 pounds lost for 15 months!
Maintaining a healthy weight does not have to mean you are barred from good tasting food. It can be done with moderation and planning wisely.
Continue Reading 1 comment May 13, 2009
New Before Pictures!
I have lost 175 pounds, and I hid from the camera on a constant basis. My mom told me that some day I would want to see pictures of me as a young adult, but with the shape I was in, I didn’t want to see me. Pictures were a smack in the face reality. I would tell myself when I did see photos that it must be the angle, or it must be the lighting, must be the outfit on that day. We can always distort the way our body looks in a mirror, but pictures… they show truth.
This picture was taken of me at a family reunion in Michigan. I really wish we would have another one so my family could see how much I have changed. They haven’t seen me since my obese weight of 294.
Yes, I had a big rack. Most people point that out in this photo. I just want to untie myself from my fat when looking at these. I look so packed in, so suffocated. That’s what these remind me of. Being suffocated within myself.
This is me from behind! So help me god, I never knew this is what it was like to walk behind me:
I was one full figured girl to say the least.
What I also want to point out is that people tell me that I can do some sit-ups and completely restore my body after losing 175 pounds. Imagin just popping me in the first image with a needle. Deflate. Sorry but the crude reality of it all is that I won’t be.
I’m saving for my tummy tuck as we speak. So excited! I hope to have 2 more consultations completed by end of May, and then on my road to a flat tummy end of year.
Wish me luck! And remember, this can be done. Look at what I was! And now I’m just a little goof fire cracker with energy to spare.
1 comment March 5, 2009
It’s confirmed! I grew up in a dysfunctional family and now I must pay.
I never knew one session of therapy would open such a can of worms! Diet in general was hardly touched in our session, but a lot of things I needed to let out where spread on the table. My fears, my anxiety, my thoughts. I was asked to pick up a book from the library called “Adult Children: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families”. Oh fun! I know I grew up in a lot of term-oil, and that I have seen and experienced a ton of things that normal family life would have never had.
My sense of control: I have been trying to control my emotions by eating. I thought for a minute there I had control over my portion’s with counting calories, but have learned I actually gave up control to counting. I don’t ask my body what it needs, and it stopped talking to me a long time ago. Sure, it will tell me when it’s hungry, but that takes forever to happen. So I feed it on the hour, every few hours.
What IS control? How do I give up control to gain control? I feel so out of control right now, but mildly in control. Gosh I am just rambling on at this point.
I like my life to be cookie cutter. I want the job, the house, the husband (all which I don’t really have). I want to be able to sit down and look at a menu and naturally feel inticed to make the right choices. I want to be able to put the fork down when I am done. I don’t want to feel anxiety looking at half a plate of pasta even when I am stuffed. I HATE that. I don’t want to feel pulled towards the cabinets. I don’t want to have to reach a specific number of calories. I want to have a healthy weight, but I don’t want to cry and ruin my day over a couple pounds.
So here I go on another journey of my life. How to exist in a world I’ve never seen normal.
1 comment February 9, 2009
It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.
When I was 295 pounds, I just wanted to be thin, and thin NOW. I wanted the scale to move, and I wanted the days done. I wanted to live life already.
After this last week, I have learned that I was fat to begin with due to instant gratification. Food was my joy, food was comfort. Food tasted good and could make me full fast. Food never denied me when I wanted it, it was always there. Food.
I am finding that I rush all the time. I rush into relationships, I rush into making fast decisions with my life. Instant. Life isn’t always instant.
I want my tummy tuck, but I must take the slow approach. I’ll have 4K saved up once I get my tax return back! Been trying to do every little thing I can to cut back on my spending. Slowing down is hard. Anxiety is my number one concern with my health at this point.
I have an appointment set to talk to a therapist about what drives me. I binge. Or LORD did I binge this weekend. I have been restricting my diet to the point that I will drink booze just to give myself the freedom feeling to eat whatever the heck I want. I’ve been sneaking food from the pantry while pretending to do laundry. I have been cooking dinner but instead while nobody is looking I am snacking on anything handy in the cabinets. The squeak of the cabinet door is a dead give away. Hands down. But if nobody looks, my fingers crawl into boxes, and my fist back to my mouth.
Awful! I feel guilty. Even if my body nutritiously needs it. I can’t be doing this to myself.
So off to therapy I go.
I’ll let you know how this goes. I need to heal my brain before I can fix my body image and get my plastic surgery. I think I’m going about this the right way.
1 comment February 3, 2009
Swallowed by skin
Standing in front of the mirror on a Saturday morning. Stark naked in my new apartment. I have never had a mirror I could fully observe myself before. Now I have access to a full length mirror in my bedroom, and this large “view me from all angles” mirror in the bathroom.
My eyes first observe my face. I am a normal looking human being. I mean, not a 10 by any standards, but I’m okay. Nothing strikingly wrong.
As I touch my stomach, my skin feels soft. It is easy to grab with my slender fingers. I stretch it across flat, just to see the way my belly button should lay. The stretch marks flatten against my abs. That’s where my body should exist. I grab my sides where my skin has fallen so gracefully against my bones. Like a sheet, covering ME. Almost feels like I am tugging at a parasite that shouldn’t exist.
I lift my flap of skin and my hip bones are prominent. Beautiful. A line that exists from many years of a creased stomach marks the spot a surgeon will cut away at me. My hands move from my stomach to around my back. I pinch and lift. An ass that I should have is apparent. So small, enough for a hand to grab. That’s when I realize the second surgeon was right. I am going to need a lower body lift. All the way around. Cutting me in half yet again. A thought strikes me: I have lost half of my weight, half of myself, and now I am going to be cut literally in HALF to be made whole again.
Somehow I am calm studying myself. Normally I would get angry in disgust, but now I’m just trying to find an understanding of how I am going to be pieced together. Complete. Together 
I let my body lay free, and raise my arms beside me. Wings. Somehow I have these large arm bat wings but they prevent me from flying. So many oxy-morons.
This month I will have saved 1K to my fund for my surgery. A small portion, but it’s a start. I’ve been wandering around makemeheal.com more and more just to look at the before and after pictures. Am I going to just need the lower body lift, and a breast lift? Or am I going to need the one they cut up my stomach? Either way, I don’t care. I don’t know if people going into this are as afraid as I am. It’s so far away, and I’m completely not ready to just DO it. Healing takes time. I need to heal before I can think about all that.
I feel swallowed in my skin.
Add comment September 22, 2008
Developing Confidence Before a Full Body Lift: A Critical Key to Success and Self Love
Someone I was talking to yesterday couldn’t wrap her mind around how people can balloon up to 300-400-500 pounds and then FIND themselves there. I was 300 pounds nearly, and I DID just find myself there. How can you not recognize and be embarrassed at your size? Simple. I grew up in an environment who didn’t take a second look at the way I was treating myself. That third bowl of ice cream was accepted. Second servings of food were OFFERED. It was one of the only ways I could comfort myself and distract myself. I can’t say I grew up with a shitty life, and I can’t blame all of this on me.
I think I need counseling. Actually, I KNOW I need counseling. If someone offered me 35K and said “hey, you go get your full body lift. Don’t worry about your job, don’t worry about anything, just go get your surgery” I’d be way excited and scared shitless. Ezra even turned to me and told me I wasn’t ready to actually get it, but that WE were ready to start preparing for that.
It’s all true. Your mind goes through a crazy process. I’ve been maintaining and looking at this body for 10 months, with Ezra by my side telling me I’m beautiful and sexy (which I’m sure helps) and I can actually look at myself in a full length mirror without wincing. You know what I see when I look in a mirror? I imagine my true body under this. I want to scream “I’m not 120 pounds! I’m smaller than this!” which sounds insane, and it IS insane. I don’t know why I try to maintain THIS weight when I know I have pounds to come off of me in skin.
1 comment September 17, 2008
Peeking out of the cocoon
Sometimes I wish I had someone in my life who understood what I was going through. Like completely UNDERSTOOD. There are a lot of people who have lost weight (yes I get that) and go through the food struggle. Not many grew up with what I had to, nor do they have to face a deflated body every morning. It’s a healthy body, but deflated none the less.
Last weekend Ezra and I were talking: He asked me if I would find it weird if he wanted to start putting away money to help me get my body lift. As creepy as that would sound to some people (yes, my boyfriend want’s to BUY my body) it’s not creepy to me. He wants to help. He want’s to see me happy. I’ve had him sit down and watch shows, even look at pictures, and he winces at the sight of all the pieces that are stitched and taken away. But when he asked that question, it nearly made me cry.
He said that he just doesn’t want to see me wait around forever and dream about it every day and then never get it done. He knows I WANT it. And I want it bad.
I laid there feeling my skin. So soft, so free and wiggly moving. So… so much apart of me. Not cut, not infected, not sore. That will change and that piece of ME that I always look at as “extra” will be gone.
Kinda like when you have a piece of popcorn in your teeth, and you work and work to get it out but then all you have left is sore gums and then you start to miss it.
*sigh*
I can’t wait until my life gets to start. I’m hoping that before the end of the month I can have saved up 1K. Throw that over into savings, and let my new life begin. All I gotta do is accumulate 18 vacation days + 5K for a down and I can DO this for me. So scary, yet exciting.
I wonder if a butterfly is afraid before cracking the cocoon?
Add comment September 17, 2008
Weightloss, Maintaining, and Plastic Surgery RAW
We live our lives waiting to LIVE our lives. It really makes no sense. I’ve been trying to keep this blog focused on my full body lift, but I am a person behind this skin. Take a minute to know me:
My name is Melinda and I have lost 175 pounds. Is that number always consistent? No! My weight fluctuates daily, by the minute, by the hour. We take so much time every morning to strip down, relieve ourselves in the toilet, stand infront of the mirror and weigh ourselves. The number goes down.. and we get happy. A glass of water (just 16 ounces!) and a pound is back on us. But we don’t dare ourselves. We are ever changing creatures.
I’m learning over time that my weight, that number on the scale, is not the true meaning of my existance. Even though I can honestly say I have developed a small EDNOS throughout this journey, I’m slowly (and I mean slowly) stepping into this realization. I’ve been trapped inside a cage, where I have to maintain thin.
Being inspirational isn’t always a good thing. It’s like becoming a mini movie star and no matter if you gain a pound or lose one, everyone notices. And you feel like a picture of your butt is being splashed across People Magazine throughout every checkout line in America. I know that I’m not THAT important, but either way it feels like all eyes are on me.
People have watched me shrink for months, years to be exact. And I feel like they’re also watching me hold steady. With each bite I feel judged.
Change is amazing. I’m moving in with my very loving supportive boyfriend (who I might add accepts my slabs of skin I want removed and still finds me sexy). This new complex nobody knows me. I have just switched jobs, where nobody knows my past history. It’s almost like starting over completely. But at the same time, I almost feel like a hidden secret.
A lot of thoughts play in my mind every day as I mentioned above: “What are they going to think if I eat that?” “If I get fat again, will people lose hope for themselves?” “If I get fat again, will people laugh at me and talk about me behind my back?” “Can people see the 5 pounds I gained after my binge?” “Do people see my skin overlap my jeans when I sit down?” It’s a constant thought. Over and over I think the world is judging me. But who has the right? Who should affect my emotions and feelings? People that are ‘just people’ or my friends and family? I think my friends, if they are really my friends, shouldn’t judge. But would I judge my friends if they were in the same situation? It’s all a giant mess. A spider web I create in my OWN head. When I take a step back, I realize that nobody really cares. Just that thought, the single thought that nobody CARES if I gain 10, heck 20 pounds. Nobody cares as long as I am happy with me and healthy.
But what is the price of being thin? Would I trade in gaining 30 pounds for a clear mind, and a peaceful relationship with food? I sure the hell would. Would I trade in THIS body for someone 50 pounds more than me with a firm stomach and strong legs? Heck yea.
I’m not sure what I’m really getting at. I guess this is one of those half steps I’m talking about. Not quite able to let go of being thin, not quite ready to let go of the fact that perfection can never be achieved.
I will get my surgery, but I understand it will never make me perfect. It will never make it where I can wear a bikini in Brazil, or comfortable stripping down to a sports bra and mini shorts for a jog. But it will help me feel just that much more whole. My day is coming soon. This next month, I’ll get to start saving a little more. And I hope to achieve a sponsor that is touched by my story in some way.
This is weightloss, maintaining, and plastic surgery RAW. I won’t hold back. I’ll tell you all how it is.
2 comments August 28, 2008
